The state Supreme Court has issued a reprieve to Superior Court Judge Carlia Brady, announcing in an order that it feels a penalty short of removal from the bench is proper for an incident where she was accused of harboring a fugitive.

The order, issued Thursday, said the court was denying Brady's motion to dismiss the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct's presentment in her case. The order also said the court,  "having determined on its review of the matter that the appropriate quantum of discipline shall not include removal," was inviting Brady to show cause why she should not "be publicly disciplined through the imposition of an appropriate sanction that is less than removal."

The court's indication that it favors a punishment less than removal comes after the ACJC announced in September that it was seeking to remove her from the bench.

The court set an April 27 date for a hearing on the appropriate measure of discipline for Brady, with the time to be set later. Justices Jaynee LaVecchia, Anne Patterson and Lee Solomon joined Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in issuing the order, with two justices dissenting. Justice Barry Albin favored reserving judgment on the motion to dismiss until after further argument on the presentment, and Justice Faustino Fernandez-Vina disagreed with foreclosing the possibility of removal. Justice Walter Timpone, who briefly represented Brady as a defense lawyer before he joined the court, abstained from involvement in the case.

Brady is now representing herself in the discipline case. A separate, wrongful arrest suit against the Woodbridge Police Department is pending in federal court.

Police in Woodbridge charged Brady with official misconduct and harboring a fugitive after she reported that her car was missing. At that time, authorities were looking for her live-in boyfriend, Jason Prontnicki, in connection with the armed robbery of a pharmacy. The official-misconduct charge was dismissed in a March 2016 decision affirmed by the Appellate Division in October 2017. The hindering charge was withdrawn after the Appellate Division ruled that Prontnicki, the only prosecution witness, could not be compelled to testify at Brady's trial.

Brady was suspended from her judicial post without pay in June 2013 and reinstated to the bench in March 2018.